How does a mild-mannered man with a good job and a loving family suddenly self-destruct in a public sex scandal? The true story of how Judd Gray, a dapper lingerie salesman, and Ruth Snyder, a sexually insatiable housewife, murder Ruth's husband is the subject of Ron Hansen's new novel "A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion" (Scribner, 256 pages, $25).

The Snyder-Gray murder case of 1927 was a crime so steamy in nature, so brutal in execution, that it captured headlines and inspired film noir plot lines. Hansen seamlessly blends historical record with invented dialogue and description to create a tale of psychological manipulation that is part Shakespeare's "Macbeth" and part Dante's "Inferno," all wrapped in 1920s America.

The title of the novel does not disappoint. From the femme fatale's need for adoration to the lust-filled, drunken decline of her lover, to the titillating trial attended by celebrities -- reading this novel is like running downhill through a maze of the seven deadly sins.

Here lust and hubris thrive in an atmosphere of gluttony and greed. Amid the Jazz Age, the stock market is flying high, speakeasies are everywhere, and although it is the era of Prohibition, hard liquor is readily available. Hansen evokes smoky dens of decadence with tin fleur-de-lis ceilings, giant fan blades rotating hot air, orchestras playing "Rhapsody in Blue" and patrons mixing martinis under tables.

When Ruth first meets Judd, he is "a solemn, handsome man ... athletic, and dapper, with owlish, round, tortoiseshell glasses." He is impressive in highly polished shoes and a Brooks Brothers suit. By the time Ruth gets through with him, however, he is a sniveling drunk convicted of murder. Reporters at the trial will describe him as a man "who couldn't put up a croquet set without help."

Why the dissolution?

Enter Ruth Snyder, "with thrilling blue eyes that flashed with so much light she seemed candled." It turns out that Ruth's inner glow is more demonic than angelic as she manipulates everyone around her. Through sexual encounters that will make you think twice about the '20s being prudish, she so upends Judd's life that he eventually tells her "my life is in what the biplane pilots call a 'death spiral.'"

The death spiral is difficult to watch as Judd is unable to extricate himself from Ruth. "She'd seduced and dominated him," he realizes, "held his yearning heart in her hands, fondly and expertly played his frailties and hankerings as if he were her pet, her toy."

What resonates in this novel is not so much what happens -- it is no secret that the lovers are tried and executed -- but rather, its triumph is in Hansen's convincing re-creation of human frailty and the tragedy that can ensue.

Christine Brunkhorst is a writer and an English teacher at St. Thomas Academy.